Community-Based Reintegration and Rehabilitation in Post-Conflict Settings

On October 30 and 31, 2000, USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives1 and UNDP’s Emergency Response Division2 co-sponsored a Roundtable entitled, Community-Based Reintegration and Rehabilitation in Post-Conflict Settings. The purpose of the Roundtable was to bring together field-based practitioners to explore important issues and to review the use of community-based approaches in post-conflict settings.
During the Roundtable discussions, participants noted the inherent conflict between establishing an overall programmatic framework at the outset—developing a vision, time frame, and exit strategy—and enabling the community to have complete ownership over the process. Participants discussed the concept of community ownership in which “control” of the process is not in the hands of international organizations, but rather in the hands of the local population who direct their own recovery process by deciding on appropriate projects, directing resources, establishing relationships, and determining the timing of the process.